Insights from the FEVAD conference
Posted by: Fidji SIMO in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Internet/Technology, eBay
I just went back from the FEVAD (French e-commerce federation) conference at Four Seasons Hotel George V (gorgeous). The 2 debates were quite interesting, and I have kept in mind a few things, sorry if they are a mess.
About the Internet in general:
- Internet brands are becoming a “patchwork”; it is stupid to try to gather a brand image in one and the same place (meaning that distribution becomes far more relevant than destination);
- The consumer in an information trader: there is no absolutely reliable information on the web (prices for example evolve all the time), so users now deal with statistical significance to get their information.
About e-commerce:
- Multichannel is everywhere, the term “pure player” is really old fashioned (best example: Pixmania opening offline stores)
- Jean-Emile Rosenblum (Pixmania founder) said that the fast development of ecommerce in other European countries is due to the right to sell at a loss, which is not allowed in France. Of course I understand this interdiction is a pain for major players which would like to use it as an investment on prices to grasp market shares, but I think this is why the French market is so buoyant: small companies still can enter the e-commerce market without fearing that Amazon would launch a price war, as it has done in other European countries.
About advertising:
- When talking about advertising on Google, we differentiate natural search (free) from sponsored links (paid). But this differenciation is not relevant anymore because there are so many sites on the French market that this is becoming harder and harder to grasp good positions in Google natural search, which implies hiring more employees to improve the natural search of a website. So at the end, natural search is all but free for e-merchants. For example, 20% of Pixmania employees are dedicated to improve Pixmania ranking in Google main result page!
And to finish, congrats to Jacques Antoine Granjon, who won the FEVAD award, for being such a great and simple guy. He is one of the first entrepreneur to say without any complex nor arrogance: “we have all the market, we are doing fine, we have no particular threats, and we don’t need any investment” !
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It’s creasy! 20% of employees dedicated for natural search! In my opinion, soon, it will be less expansive communicate on an offline channel.
You are so right! And Pixmania is doing it with catalogues (multichannel is not only for commerce but also for advertising!)
But sincerely I was amazed by this figure, 20% is huge.